


Hidden Things

by crowleyshouseplant



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-16
Updated: 2016-02-16
Packaged: 2018-05-20 22:38:56
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6027982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crowleyshouseplant/pseuds/crowleyshouseplant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Leia finds Luke's lightsaber that he lost and brings it to Maz Kanata</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hidden Things

During the rebellion, there had been long days and longer nights. Now that there had been victory (but at what cost), the days felt longer still, and the nights endless. Leia was stretched on her bed, Han beside her, sleeping soundless and noiselessly. Her muscles cramped as her mind raced.  

She felt as if she had something to do, which was ridiculous because she had a thousand things to do. Her senatorial experience would be vital in reconstructing the new Republic. 

But there was that resolute feeling that she had something else to do beyond reconstructing a Republic from the ruins of the Empire. Slowly, she slipped her hand from Han's sleepy grip and, on tip-toes, crept from the bed Han had wrestled in the cramped quarters of the Falcon, pulling on a light robe that reminded her of the gown she had worn in Bespin. She didn't like thinking about Cloud City. It had been gorgeous and Lando Calrissian had been courteous and Darth Vader has been merciless.

There were no mirrors in the Falcon, so she ran her fingers through her hair to make sure it was vaguely presentable in case there were others up and around. Her hair was cropped short to fit neatly under the wigs she wore for the styles she favored, styles that were reminiscent of Naboo. She had always known that her mother was from Naboo, even when she was a little girl. Bail Organa had made no secret of that.

She had visited there several times, and had felt something cold each time, something lingering there just on the edge of her vision, a woman who was familiar to her, who was both beautiful and sad. 

They were in orbit over Coruscant on a recovery mission of the vital records and data the Empire had collected, but none of them had been foolish enough to actually stay the night. When they had wandered the empty halls of the Emperor's former palace, she had put her hands to the walls. She could feel something pulsing there, some remnant of Palpatine's reign. Luke's face had been wan and drawn, and he had said that the dark side of the force was strong. She had nodded even though she didn't quite understand--just knew that she remembered Alderaan clearly here, the cold anger freezing through her as her hands and voice shook when she spoke. 

It had been a relief to return to the Falcon, which was really saying something. 

She found Luke and Lando at the Dejarik table, though the game itself was not activated. They were drinking cups of caf, and Luke pushed a third cup towards her. "I thought you'd be here sooner," he said. "But it's still warm."

She took it gratefully.  

They sat in silence, and it was comfortable. Leia knew why Luke was awake, and she knew why Lando was awake. Lando had bad dreams, always had since she'd known him after Bespin, and they had gotten worse after the Battle for Endor.  

She had bad dreams too. So did Luke. 

She looked at Luke sideways. He still hadn't repaired his hand after the stray blaster shot on Tatooine destroyed the syn-flesh. She wondered if he ever would, if he'd keep that black glove on forever. 

"Well aren't we just a party," Lando said. His voice was soft. 

Luke put his gloved hand on Lando's shoulder. "We're good." 

Leia drank her caf, and thought about finding Luke on Bespin, his missing hand, the devastated, ruined look in his eyes.

She wondered if she had the ghost of that look in her eyes because she still couldn't believe that Darth Vader was her father. She knew it was so, but she could not fathom it. She wondered what it would have been like if she and Luke had grown up together. If she had been in Tatooine, or he had been with her in Alderaan. 

Or if their positions had been switched and Bail Organa had desired a boy instead of a girl. If Luke had been the senator and she had been the farm girl on Tatooine. 

Would Obi-Wan have given her her father's lightsaber?  

"Thanks for the caf," she said realizing it was gone when she went to take another sip. "I need to get back."

Luke caught her hand before she went, and she squeezed his fingers, gently, before letting go. 

But still, she could not sleep. Bespin was on her mind, the city in the clouds. She kept imagining the fight between Darth Vader and Luke, between father and sun. 

They had been made bait and of course Luke had come because Luke always came for his friends.  

Resentment dripped through her as she gripped her sheets in her fist.  

Being bait was never glamorous. It was about being an object, being humiliated. Being used.  

If Darth Vader was so powerful with the Force, then why hadn't he recognized her as his daughter?  

Why did she care? Maybe he had recognized her and didn't care. Maybe he had seen something familiar and had stayed his hand and she didn't realize. Maybe a lot of things but Alderaan was still gone.  

She breathed deeply to stay the tears, tipping her head back against the pillow.  

Her thoughts returned to Bespin. She didn't want to think about Bespin, about what had happened to Han and Luke, and what she had done afterwards to rescue Han from the Hutt. 

But her thoughts turned to Bespin until she made arrangements the next morning for her to take an X-Wing on official New Republic business.

Han didn't want to go with her, and Luke looked at her with that look that revealed he knew she was lying. There was a little amusement and a little concern there too, but he didn't try and stop her. Lando wished her good luck and offered her one of his own personal ships, so that she might travel in style and comfort. Han, of course, took offense, and they were still bickering that the Falcon did have style and comfort when she left in the X-Wing. 

She let the old R3 unit do most of the flying while she slept. Word on the rebel bases was that Leia never slept, but the people who knew her best knew both how true and untrue that was. She slept when she could, and when she could, it was never long enough. But here in the X-Wing, even though time flew by beyond the hyperspace tunnel, it was timeless within, and there was no guilt when she closed her eyes, and they stayed closed until R3 creaked at her, rattling the flaps on her ship to wake her. 

It was morning on Bespin, and she watched the sun rise in orbit from the X-wing. Acid boiled in her belly and, for a minute, she was afraid she was going to be sick. So many unhappy things had happened here, this city in the clouds, and she was coming back, looking behind her when she should be looking ahead.

She docked anonymously with the other tourists who came and left as they pleased. It didn't look as well off as when Lando had been governing the city, and she wondered why he had chosen to stay with them, and how long that would last. She did not follow the steps they had taken--they would not let her into those sensitive places that required security access she did not have, but she did find a place where, if she craned her neck and covered her eyes from the sun, she could imagine that she saw the platforms where Luke had fought Vader.  

A chill settled over her shoulders, clamming her skin as she paced the floors levels below where Luke and Vader had fought. Slowly, she left the populated sections, decorated with neon holo-boards advertising the types of gambling available, until she was in an area that had been cordoned off.  

Nobody allowed but authorized personnel, but she looked over her shoulder, ducked her head, and followed the cold. 

Her breath came out in frozen gasps that reminded her of Hoth, and she folded her hands under her arms to keep warm. 

She knew what it was, of course. Luke had told her enough for her to know. She still didn't know what she was looking for or why she had come, but she knew that if she followed the cold to its end, she would find it.

It was a feeling she had, the same kind of feeling that had told her where to find Luke and that had told her he had made it off the second death star. 

Something crunched under her boot, rolled and twisted her ankle until she fell to her knees with pain aching dully through her joints. And there it was, underneath a year's worth of garbage and dust. A skeletal hand clutching what Leia immediately recognized as her brother's lightsaber--or her father's lightsaber, depending on one's point of view. 

Frost filmed her skin as she reached towards the bones, asking forgiveness as she broke the fingers to access the lightsaber. 

It was heavier than she was expecting.

The cold burned her, and she wondered why she hadn't thought to bring gloves.

The sun disappeared behind the clouds that gave the city is name, and she was in shadow.

Breathing that she remembered all too well, that still woke her from her uneasy sleeps, sounded behind her, and she clutched the saber to her chest and turned. A dark robe swept the brittle, skeletal leaves, and the heavy tread of a boot echoed down the barren and deserted streets.

It wasn't possible, she told herself, because Luke had told her that Vader had died protecting him, and Luke would never lie.

It was a trick, nothing more.

But the steps sounded louder, the shadows drew together into the graceful length of sweeping robe, and she clearly saw a familiar profile stretching towards where she still knelt in rubble and ruin. 

There was the curve of Vader's helmet, the one that Luke had said he had removed, and he had seen the face of his father, a face he had thought about so much, and how what he had seen had not matched his expectation.

Leia was not a coward, and so she forced herself to gaze beyond the shadow and to look, instead, for the thing that cast it. It did not take her long to see the figure pacing towards her, the streets shimmering into the durasteel of a destroyer as Vader strode towards her.  

A summer breeze that turned cold went by her, and leaves skittered by her knees, tumbling them down to be crushed by Vader's boots.  

Vader braced against the wind, pulling the bulk of his shoulders, cape flapping so wildly she could see sheer slides of white senatorial robes revealed from the underside of the black cloth, and the helmet coming undone in long curls of hair, slipping past their ornate bonds, and Leia dropped the lightsaber. 

It fell with a light tap of metal against stone at her knees that rang like a thunderclap in her ears. The sun passed the clouds and the shadows crept back to where they belonged. There was an ache in her knees, and she was alone in a bright sun, with sweat trickling down her back. 

With shaking hands, she picked up the saber again, but whatever she had seen before did not return. It was silent and still as she tucked it to her belt and rose to her feet. She brushed off the grit from her knees and walked quickly back to her ship.

The lightsaber was a weight at her thigh, and her mind raced wondering what to do with it. 

She wondered if she should return it to Luke, but he already had one that was his, while this was his father's. 

This was the lightsaber that he had used to destroy the jedi. She knew that much, had read that much in her own research.

This was a lightsaber that should have remained lost, but it had brought her here, it had pulled her here, and she had listened to the Force. 

She bit her lips as she side-stepped the growing clouds in Cloud City. 

She could keep it for herself, but that did not feel right. She was no jedi, she did not want to be a jedi. 

She wasn't like Luke.

She wan't like her father.

She shook the cold again from her as she climbed into her X-wing. R3 asked where she wanted to go.

She closed her eyes, and remembered the name of someone Han had once described to her on the long trip to Cloud City, when they had no lightspeed and it was only them in the Falcon as they crawled to what should have been safety.

"I should take you to Takodana," Han had told her, when he had been lounging in the pilot's seat and she was half-asleep in the chair behind him while Threepio and Chewbacca had been playing Dejarik. "Maz would like you." And then he had told her about Maz and the watering hole she had kept, something that was as close to sanctuary as one could get in a galaxy like theirs, and he was still telling her about it even after she had fallen asleep.

You would like Maz, and the words rang through her and she was barely thinking as she programmed the coordinates into the computer, and it wasn't until after the stars streamed by her that she wondered how she had known them at all, since Han had not told her where it was and she herself had not remembered the conversation until that moment. 

But Leia did not feel that she was wrong, and when she broke out of hyperspace, and looked down on the green planet below, she knew she had been right. 

She set the X-wing down, and passed through the walls surrounding Maz's place. There was a large statue of what she assumed was Maz. Bangles hung from her wrists, and her arms were held in welcome.

For the first time, something like relief eased through Leia as she pushed her way into the castle. There was music and there were people--smugglers and pirates, she could tell--and there were games 

Of course, Han would want to take her to a place like this. 

She felt guilty, for a moment, that he was not here with her, but then the lightsaber hung heavy at her hip and she was glad that he was not.

And then she saw Maz weaving her way through the crowd with such a sense of belonging that grief tore through Leia's heart, and she slumped into the nearest empty chair. And then, she saw that Maz was coming her way, and slipping into the vacant chair opposite of hers.  

"I know you," Maz said, and Leia wondered that she could hear her so clearly over the din of voices and music and sound. "I've been waiting for you."

Her eyes were large behind her glasses. 

"How?" asked Leia. "I barely knew I was coming here myself." 

"How is Chewbacca?" Maz said. "I miss that wookie. They both owe me a visit."

"They're fine," Leia said. "I'll tell them you miss them. How did you know I was coming?" 

Maz inclined her gaze towards the lightsaber still belted at Leia's side. "I heard it calling, and I heard you answer the call, and I knew you would have no place to bring it, so I, in turn, called to you." She reached over the table and held Leia's hand. "In truth, you saved me a trip. It should not have stayed so long buried in Cloud City. It was not safe there."  

Leia focused on Maz's touch. "Will it be safe here?" 

Maz nodded. "Until it is ready to leave my care."

"Will you be safe with it here?"  

A smile split across Maz's wizened face as she pulled the goggles from her eyes and wiped them, as if she might cry from laughing. "I have lived for over a thousand years. I have nothing to fear from that old thing." 

Leia unbelted it from her waist. It seemed to rest easy in her hand, no longer cold like it had been in Cloud City. Maybe it wanted to be here. Maybe it needed to be here, waiting for the right someone to find it again.

It shuddered in her hand, and then sailed across the room. 

She was on her feet in an instant, just barely remembering she hadn't brought any weapons with her like some kind of fool, when she felt Maz's hand on her arm. "Don't," she said. 

A Togruta woman came towards her through the milling throng. Her lekku were long, her montrals curved and tall. Two lightsabers of her own were belted at her side, but she held the lightsaber in her hand as if she had never seen one before.

Leia slid back into her seat when the woman joined them. "Where did you get this?" And then, the words stopped short out of her mouth as she looked down at Leia, recognition slowly filling them. 

"Oh," she said as she passed the lightsaber to Maz. 

"Do I know you?" Leia asked.

"I'll leave you two together," Maz said, "while I'll put this away until its time has come again.

Leia slid her seat closer to the Togruta woman who was staring at the table as if it held all the answers of the universe--or as if she were avoiding Leia entirely. "Do I know you?" she asked again, more urgently, introducing that hard edge into her voice to get the answers that she wanted, that she needed.

She raised her head then, looked Leia in the eye. "No. You don't know me. But I am Ahsoka Tano. And I have not seen that lightsaber for a very long time." Her voice was thick and Leia realized that she was about to weep. 

"What do you mean?" Leia's voice was dry and her throat was dry and her tongue was dry and she may as well have been a desert. 

"I knew your father," Ahsoka said. "He was my master when I was a child, when there were still Jedi." Her smile was sad, and her sigh came from a kind of grief that Leia recognized and knew. The Jedi were gone, just like Alderaan was gone.

"And I knew your mother." Ahsoka smiled then. "You have your mother's eyes. They were brown, just like yours. But you have a lot of your father in you as well you. Just like Obi Wan once said about Luke. And he was right about him. He was right." 

Luke's eyes were pale and blue, and she wondered if he had his father's eyes, just like he had his father's legacy.

"My mother was Queen Breha," Leia said. "I never knew Senator Amidala, though she was a very brave according to my parents on Alderaan."

"She was," Ahsoka said, nodding. Then she rose to her feet and relief eased through Leia. This woman knew things about Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala, things that Leia knew would ruin her, things that would make her grieve, things that would make her want to forgive, things that would make her see him as Luke could see him.  

But he would always be Darth Vader to her. 

"Don't be afraid," Ahsoka said, "you have nothing to fear."

And then she disappeared into the throng, and Leia was left alone until she sought Maz out, thanked her for her help, and left.  

When she arrived back on the Falcon, she was grateful that both Luke and Han had the decency to not ask her where she had been. She wondered, though, if Luke suspected. If he did, all he said was, "I hope you found what you were looking for."  

To which she had no answer, because though she had found the lightsaber, had found Ahsoka, memories of her father's past, she was no closer to understanding. She was no closer to being the person that she thought she should be. The person who could forgive and move on. 

"I don't know," she said.

He told her that it was okay. 

And she wondered if he was right.

**Author's Note:**

> I knew I had to finish this fic when the new titles for Star Wars Rebels came out--Ahsoka is my forever fave and I firmly believe that she and Maz hang out regularly. This will probably be jossed by the aforementioned season finale that will air in March but what else is fanfic for.


End file.
